Vermilion Drift

by William Kent Krueger

  He was almost finished eating when his cell phone chirped. “O’Connor,” he answered.

  “It’s Marsha Dross, Cork. We have a situation here. Can you come to my office right away?”

  The instant he walked into Dross’s office, he could feel the tension in the air. Dross was at her desk. Rutledge was standing at the window. Ed Larson was sitting with Lou Haddad and his wife. All eyes swung toward Cork.

  “Come in,” Dross said, rising. “You know Sheri?”

  “Of course. How are you?” he asked.

  Haddad’s wife smiled bravely, and her hand lifted a little in a halfhearted greeting.

  “Sheri got a note,” Dross said. “Same message Lou and the others received, but with a twist.”

  Dross indicated a sheet of paper on her desk. Cork walked over and took a look but didn’t touch. There was a trifold, just as there’d been with the others. The note had been printed on paper that Cork was pretty sure had no identifying watermark, and the same blood-dripping font—From Hell—had been used. The message was almost the same as before, but, as Dross had indicated, it was different and in a terrifying way: We die, U die. Just like her.

  “Just like her?” Cork said.

  “We’re assuming it refers to Lauren Cavanaugh,” Ed Larson said. “Which is interesting. As far as we know, only those of us associated with the investigation knew that Lauren Cavanaugh was one of the victims in the mine.”

  “Not true,” Cork said. “The person who put her there knew.”

  “Exactly,” Larson said. “We’re taking this very seriously.”

  “Where did you get this, Sheri?”

  “It was under the windshield wiper of my car.”

  “Have Max Cavanaugh or Genie Kufus received anything more?” Cork asked Dross.

  “We contacted Cavanaugh at his house this afternoon. He’s got nothing more.”

  “And Kufus?”

  For a moment, they all appeared to be frozen, a tableau of awkward concern. Then Dross said, “She seems to be missing.”

  SIXTEEN

  Genie Kufus wasn’t at her hotel, nor was she answering her cell phone. Her car was gone. None of her team from the DOE knew where she was.

  “When was the last time anyone saw her?” Cork asked.

  “She met with her team over lunch, then she returned to her room to work. None of them have heard from her since, and none of them saw her leave the hotel.”

  “Have you checked her room?”

  “Of course,” Dross said. “She’s not there.”

  “You went in?”

  “Yes. With the manager.”

  “Any sign of a struggle?”

  “No.”

  “Anything appear to be missing?”

  “That’s hard to say without knowing what should be there.”

  “You put out a BOLO?” Which was shorthand for Be on the Lookout.

  Dross nodded. “She’s driving a rented cherry red Explorer. Not easy to miss.”

  “You mind if I have a look at her hotel room?”

  Dross shot glances toward Larson and Rutledge. They both gave nods. “Under the circumstances, I’m going to say okay. But I’d like to be there with you.”

  “Of course.” Cork stood up and smiled at Haddad and his wife. “I think you should go somewhere safe. When was the last time you two took a vacation together?”

  * * *

  The room Genie Kufus occupied at the Four Seasons overlooked Iron Lake and the marina. It was a lovely view of white-masted sloops and powerboats set against dark blue water.

  Dross said, “My guys have already been here, Cork. What are you looking for that they didn’t see?”

  “I hope I’ll know it when I see it.”

  He turned from the windows and scanned the room. Kufus was neat, well organized. Either she traveled a great deal and had the process down or this was who she was all the time. Nothing looked out of place, and that was helpful to Cork. He walked to the desk. Her laptop was closed. He opened it.

  “Don’t turn that on,” Dross warned. “Until I’ve determined that she’s officially missing, we’re on thin ice just being here.”

  She was right. Cork glanced through the documents that lay stacked next to the computer. They all appeared to be technical papers dealing with the mine and mining in general. He went to the closet. Dresses and slacks were hung with care; shoes had been set on the floor like soldiers in formation. He went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Lingerie, scented with lilac from a little pouch of sachet. Which seemed odd for a woman in town on business. The rest of the drawers held other, less interesting, clothing: folded tops, sweaters, shorts.

  He entered the bathroom, where he found the towels racked with measured precision. Not even an errant hair on the sink.

  “Interesting,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Kufus is a swimmer, but I don’t see a bathing suit anywhere. Why don’t you call the front desk, make sure none of the staff saw her go out for a swim this afternoon.”

  “We already did that.”

  “Never hurts to double check.”

  She looked ready to offer a reply, probably not a pleasant one, but instead moved to the phone to make the call.

  Cork went back to the desk. The charging cord for the woman’s cell phone was still plugged in, but the phone was gone. Next to the cord was a small pad of notepaper supplied by the hotel. There was a clear indentation from a note that had been written and then torn from the pad. Cork lifted and turned it so that the white paper caught the light through the window just right, and the faint grooving of Kufus’s handwriting was legible. He put the pad back down as Dross hung up the phone.

  “She usually takes a swim in the afternoon, but, as we’ve already been told, no one saw her go out today,” Dross reported.

  “All right,” Cork said. “I’m finished here.”

  “Wasted trip,” she said.

  Cork chose not to contradict her.

  It was dusk when he headed out of Aurora, south along the shoreline of Iron Lake. He passed the Chippewa Grand Casino just outside of town, where the parking lot was three-quarters filled and still filling. The casino had been a godsend to the Iron Lake Ojibwe, whose profits had underwritten more improvements on the rez than Cork could count. Over the years, however, the casino had also delivered its share of difficulties, but that evening when he passed, he wasn’t thinking about the pros and cons of Indian gaming. He was thinking about the words Kufus had written on the sheet of notepaper she’d torn from the pad in her room: Moon Haven Cove.

  Four miles south, Cork turned off the highway onto Moon Haven Drive. The road narrowed to a slender thread of black asphalt weaving among a thick stand of red pine. He didn’t have to think about where the road led. There was only one home on Moon Haven Cove, and it belonged to Max Cavanaugh.

  He could have told the sheriff what he’d found, but the note had satisfied him that the disappearance of the DOE’s mining consultant probably wasn’t cause for alarm, and he’d decided that it would be better to pursue the lead quietly on his own. If, as he suspected, Kufus’s visit had nothing at all to do with mine business, a sudden appearance by the authorities had the potential for being embarrassing for all involved.

  Of course, the whole question could have been easily answered with a phone call, but Cork had a gut sense—and he was nothing if not a man who followed his gut instincts—that something very interesting might result from seeing to this personally.

  He drove slowly as he approached Cavanaugh’s lake home. It was a behemoth of a construction. All the homes that went up on the lake these days seemed to be that way. When Cork was growing up, a place on the lake still meant a modest cabin or a small house with a screened porch that may or may not have been insulated for winter occupancy. There was often a tiny dock, where a boat with a reasonable outboard or a little skiff with a mast for a single sail was tied up. The woods drew close around those old places, and they shared the shoreline
together in comfortable intimacy.

  No one built small anymore. Certainly not Max Cavanaugh. And the woods stood back from his opulent construct, as if drawing away, repulsed.

  The great home lay in deep purple cast from the evening sky. The wide lawn appeared to be an inlet of a wine-colored sea. The black asphalt gave way to a circular drive made of crushed limestone bordered with flowers. Parked in the drive, near the front door, was the red Explorer that Kufus had rented for her time in Aurora. Cork pulled up behind her vehicle, turned off his Land Rover, and stepped out onto the drive. He saw immediately that the Explorer’s tires were flat. On closer examination, he discovered they’d been slashed, all four. He also discovered that an envelope had been slipped under the windshield wiper on the driver’s side. On the face of the envelope, printed in the dripping red font called From Hell, was Kufus’s name.

  When he reached the porch of Cavanaugh’s house, he wasn’t surprised to find another envelope, this bearing the name of Max Cavanaugh, printed in From Hell. The envelope had been pinned to the door with a hunting knife that would have been perfect for gutting a moose or slashing tires.

  He rang the bell, twice. No one answered. He began a slow circumnavigation of the property, checking the windows as he went, unable to see anything because the curtains were all drawn. From the back of the house came the sound of soft jazz playing over good speakers. Rounding the rear corner, he saw the great bricked patio, the table and wine bottle, the two chairs with towels folded over the back of each, but he saw neither Cavanaugh nor Kufus. The music came from an opened patio door.

  Cork was just about to head that way when he caught sight of the dock on the far side of the back lawn where it edged the cove. Cavanaugh and Kufus were there. Cavanaugh wore red swim trunks. Kufus wore a swimsuit, a black one-piece that looked designed more for exercise than for showing off at the beach. They stood close together, and, as Cork watched, Kufus put her arms gently around her companion. Behind them in the late dusk, the surface of Moon Haven Cove was a perfect mirror of the plum-colored sky.

  Cavanaugh spotted him and pulled away. He said something to Kufus, and they both turned toward the house. They spoke a moment more, then walked the path to the patio.

  “My, my,” the woman said, taking one of the towels from the back of a patio chair. “You do get around.”

  “I rang the bell,” Cork said. “No one answered.”

  “Can’t hear much from down there,” Cavanaugh said, indicating the dock. He had a body taut and sinewy but also scarred in a number of places. In the shower after one of the basketball games the Old Martyrs had played, he’d told Cork they were all the results of his mine work over the years. He’d said he liked the danger of the job. “What’s up?”

  Cork said, “Ms. Kufus, did you know the whole county is worried about you?”

  “It’s Genie, and whatever for?”

  “Some more threats have been delivered. As a matter of fact, you have one waiting for you on your car. And, Max, there’s one for you.”

  Cavanaugh looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “Why don’t we all go to your front door and I’ll show you.”

  Cavanaugh led them into the house, leaving a gray trail of water droplets on the white carpeting all the way to the front door. When he saw the envelope, he reached for the knife that pinned it.

  “It might be better to wait, Max,” Cork said. “The sheriff’s people will want to go over it for prints.”

  Cavanaugh ignored him, tugged the knife blade free, and opened the envelope.

  We die. U die. Just like her. In dripping red From Hell.

  He held it out for Kufus to see. She read it, and her response surprised Cork.

  “Fuck them,” she said. She looked beyond Cavanaugh to where her rental was parked. The envelope was clearly visible on the windshield, a white rectangle against the reflection of a bruise-colored sky, and she said again, low and hard, “Fuck them.”

  Azevedo was the deputy dispatched on the call. When he arrived, he told Cork the sheriff wanted to see both Kufus and Cavanaugh at the department as soon as possible. Cavanaugh stayed while the deputy filled out an incident report, but Cork offered to drive Kufus into town immediately. Cavanaugh told her to go ahead. He’d be in touch. Azevedo put the notes, the envelopes, and the knife into evidence bags and gave them to Cork to deliver to the sheriff. Then Cork and a taciturn Kufus took off for Aurora.

  Dark had fallen, and a mist of stars covered the sky. Kufus sat silently on the far side of the Land Rover, and Cork could feel her anger.

  “Mind if I ask a question?” Cork said.

  “Would it matter?” Clearly she was still pissed. Maybe about the threats. Maybe about Cork’s intrusion. Maybe about having to be chauffeured back to Aurora by a guy she didn’t particularly like.

  “What is it between you and Max?”

  She looked out the window and up at the stars. “He knows I’m a swimmer, and he invited me out to swim in the cove.”

  “And to talk about mine business?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Mine business.”

  “That’s why you were holding each other? Mine business?”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I haven’t told you what I think.”

  “You’re a man. I’ve spent my whole life in a business dominated by men. I know what men think.”

  “Men like Max Cavanaugh?”

  “Max is different.”

  “How?”

  She looked at him. “Are you really trying to get me to open up to you? Because if you are, you’re doing a shitty job.”

  He kept his eyes on the road ahead, but he could feel her glare.

  “Hell,” she finally said, settling back. “Are you married?”

  “I was. My wife died.”

  It had been well over a year, but the actual words still felt alien to him, and every time he was forced to say them, he wondered if they would ever come easy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softening just a bit.

  “Gauging by the rock and the gold band on your finger, I’d say you’re married.”

  “To a wonderful guy named Steve, whom I love very much. Given what you’re clearly assuming about me, you may not believe that.”

  “I don’t know you well enough to assume anything about you.”

  Cork swerved to avoid a deer lurking at the edge of the road.

  “Look, Max speaks highly of you, so I’m going to level,” she said. “I knew him a long time ago. Before Steve. We were in graduate school together at Carnegie Mellon.”

  “You knew him well back then?”

  “Very well.”

  “The one that got away?”

  “I let him go. He made it clear from the beginning that he had no intention of ever settling down, having a family. And those were things I wanted very much.”

  “For two people who let go of each other a long time ago, you looked pretty cozy on the dock.”

  “We’ve stayed in touch over the years, okay? He needed to talk to someone about Lauren. It’s tearing him up, and he doesn’t have anyone here he feels he can confide in.”

  Cork said, “I appreciate what you’re telling me.”

  “And I’d prefer it wasn’t something you share with people.”

  “Worried about conflict of interest where Vermilion One is concerned?”

  “The appearance of it. In my mind, there is no conflict of interest.”

  “Folks around here would give a whole lot to know your thinking about the mine right now.”

  “I still have a lot of mine to look at. I’m excellent at what I do. And fair. If it’s a good site for nuclear storage, I’ll say so.” She was quiet again, then: “I have children, Cork. I have a home I love. I understand how people here must feel.”

  “But in the end, you have a job to do?”

  “In the end, don’t we all? And isn’t a part of who we are about the integrity we bring to our
work?”

  It was a tough point to concede, but Cork understood exactly where she was coming from.

  He delivered Kufus to the sheriff’s office, along with the evidence bags. He stayed while Dross and Larson and Rutledge interviewed her.

  As the two men drew their questioning to a close, Dross signaled Cork to follow, and they exited the interview room.

  In the hallway, Dross said, “We got a preliminary indication from Agent Upchurch this evening. All the skeletal remains are female and, except for one, appear to be Native American. The one that isn’t was the one with the bullet in her spine.”

  “Monique Cavanaugh,” Cork said. “Mother and daughter killed with the same weapon. Curiouser and curiouser.”

  Cork escorted Genie Kufus back to her hotel. He walked her to her room, where she opened the door and allowed him inside to check the safety of her lodging.

  “Lock your door,” he said as he prepared to leave.

  “See? Just like a man. Of course I intend to lock my door.”

  “Sorry,” Cork said. “Habit.”

  “Are there any women in your life?”

  “A couple.”

  “They haven’t taught you anything, have they?”

  “They’ve tried. Night,” Cork said.

  “Good night.” Then she added, though it seemed to go against her better judgment, “Thank you.”

  She closed the door behind him.

  He waited in the hallway until he heard the lock click.

  SEVENTEEN

  Much earlier that night, when he saw how things were going, Cork had called Judy Madsen and asked her to supervise the closing of Sam’s Place. She’d agreed, though reluctantly, and had said, “You know, if I were a bona fide partner in this enterprise or, heck, owned the whole damn thing, I’d feel a lot better about this.”

  Cork had never before seriously considered taking her up on her offer, but that night he thought the unthinkable. He thought, Maybe.